The use of super caps is a great idea for short duration charge storage. I also like using them for protection from brown outs for motor controllers with high current inrush causing sudden IR drops. Using these for temporary keep alive power (during batter swapouts) is a great idea as well.

I wonder if this technology could have applications in solar energy storage as well? Solar's big disadvantage has always been that it only works during daylight hours. Anyone know if this technology has the ability to store energy for up to 12 hours or so?

It would be good to encourage some kind of research on hybrid technology than to criticise them as some of the above comments have been made. There are many products in the market which has its own importance. Regenerative braking has not only been developed by the group in malaysia but in various other places and some people who commented are just trying to give publicity to their work rather than giving some technical useful informations.

I am surprised that regenerative braking with supercapacitors/ultracapacitors storage is not a new idea and/or innovation. The idea has been there and it has been developed by Prof. Prabaaran's team in the university of nottingham in Malaysia in May 2010. Check out his homepage for more details : www.prabaharansrs.com
Besides that we have developed LED flash system with Hybrid power storage system involving Li-ion battery and supercapacitors. Recently, Prof. Prabaharan has developed a RC helicopter powered by a new hybrid power source (Li-Ion + Supercap) which has demonstrated longer Airborne together with elasping the battery life for almost 1.5 times.
Concerning Hybrid power storage, that has also been developed and addressed with smart power management system. For more details contact Prof. Prabaharan

I can imaging this hybrid solution working for some users, but I really don't see the need to put these devices together in a package? What is their target market? If you are going to use these in cars why would you put two (three with controller) different parts together which will most likely have different lifetimes, and should be easily replaced? If something like this is not already in the Prius, or other hybrids then we need some new engineers working on electric cars (or perhaps it just doesn't work in the field.)..

Now that I have found "page 2" I see it is just a li-ion battery with large surface area electrodes, something silver-tongued grant-suckers have been doing for 10 years. Remember that Stanford guy using carbon nanotubes for the electrode? Remember EEstor, for that matter? So what this thing gives you is something with the disadvantages of both supercaps and batteries. All the chemistry, temperature, self-discharge, and cycle-life problems of a battery, with the low capacity of a supercap. But the architecture makes up for it, yeah sure. The primary application of this technology is to make the founders and VC rich while leaving stockholders broke and employees jobless.

Frank Eory makes an essential point: "I don't see how these hybrid ultracaps can store enough energy to be practical in HEV's." There are two major types of auto power requirements (high wattage propulsion power and low wattage digital control electronics). Certainly it makes sense to separate the two but it makes little difference whether the storage is centralized or distributed. Low current power requirements can be met by standby ultra capacitors which are quickly recharged - or a small "digital circuit" battery. The challenge is how to store and quickly rechange the brute force battery to move the vehicle. Centralizing or distributing the storage devices doesn't change the total number of watts which must be stored.

As emphasized in the article that EV can be one of the main application, it would be a very excited news. The EV development is totally hindered by the battery technology nowadays so if this breakthrough can finally be economic and reliable (safety?!), we can quickly move forward to build a lot of EV and make the word cleaner (hopefully)!

Many of you commenting seem to miss the point "Ioxus hybrid ultracapacitors with built-in lithium-ion batteries enables distributed storage archtectures that works better than either technology alone."
Ioxus is mixing ultracaps WITH batteries. This is not a new idea, in and of itself. The novelty comes from its use- in cars. Many proven examples exist showing how the two TOGETHER work far better than just one or the other.
Having the caps located next to the load allows for huge current draws from the cap and then the battery can recharge the cap.

In conjunction with unveiling of EE Times’ Silicon 60 list, journalist & Silicon 60 researcher Peter Clarke hosts a conversation on startups in the electronics industry. One of Silicon Valley's great contributions to the world has been the demonstration of how the application of entrepreneurship and venture capital to electronics and semiconductor hardware can create wealth with developments in semiconductors, displays, design automation, MEMS and across the breadth of hardware developments. But in recent years concerns have been raised that traditional venture capital has turned its back on hardware-related startups in favor of software and Internet applications and services. Panelists from incubators join Peter Clarke in debate.